


Rise and Shine, Mircalla Karnstein!

by failsafe



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Existential Angst, F/F, Humanity, Introspection, Lists, Mortality, Philosophy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2018-09-22 15:51:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9614897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/failsafe/pseuds/failsafe
Summary: Carmilla tries to figure out why people bother being human.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RecessiveJean](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RecessiveJean/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy this story! This format is kind of new to me but reminded me of certain older, period texts I read in my Gothic Lit class back in high school. (It's been a while, but maybe it's reminiscent of the epistolary style of something like Dracula? I don't know; it just felt right.)

Carmilla recalls her first objections to the strange, sickening sensation of being  _ alive _ again. More accurately, being mortal again, since stolen life and undeath were technically a kind of interminable living that would not give her a break, ever or at all. Those first, angry cries that tried their best to be threats leveled at a now-incorporeal _ Mother _ of her former peculiarity, the goddess Inanna, or Ishtar – who was apparently an honest-to-God ancient Sumerian goddess – had been concerned with several, bitter big-picture kinds of concerns. 

They were, in vague, mostly descending order of importance: 

  * The feeling of Laura's still-warm, lifeless body held in her arms made the very thought of _life_ still held in her own breast, in a word, unbearable. 

  * The cruel irony of asking for death, only to be granted her request in the long, long term prospect of having a mortal body again – after _all of this_ – was not lost on her. 

  * The authority of a goddess to grant and deny her life and death on a whim and under nearly false pretense of her intent for centuries pissed her off, philosophically. Who did Mother think she was? Inanna, apparently. Sumerian goddess of love, beauty, sexual desire, fertility, knowledge, wisdom, war, and combat. Quite the resume. As dear, pitiful Laura had so recently pointed out, before her voice petered out forever, it was hard to say if Inanna's resume and subsequent work history was a good or bad thing for feminism. Still, who did Mother think she was? Certainly not the _God_ Carmilla – Mircalla, Countess Karnstein of Styria, seventeenth century Austria – had erstwhile, occasionally, sentimentally, intermitently believed in, prayed to, cursed, denied, or tried to reconcile her existence to. Who did Inanna think she was? 

  * She felt her strength, the powers and senses that had been so heightened, that were _hers_ , fading away into nothing. 

  * Feeling her heart beat inside her chest – _thump, bump, thump, thump-thump_ – back into a regular rhythm made her feel nausea. Other body systems that hadn't really had a job in a long time also got back to work with less fanfare, but every single one of them seemed to make a sound that mocked her hearing as it lowered into a more and more normal, typical, utterly average range. It was like the most mundane, wet, discordant insult she had ever received. Basically, it was gross. 




As it turned out, after that first day, these concerns had started to seem no less valid but a lot less relevant. Except maybe the last one. Everything else was more on the order of existential angst – nothing new to her, of course, but there were, apparently, other things to worry about now. 

Three centuries – including that time interred, doing nothing but thinking, agonizing, drowning and unable to die – spent observing human life from the outside had given her a certain attitude toward it that did not quite mesh with being human. The span of history that she had seen gave her some appreciation for human ingenuity in the span of an ordinary human lifetime. On the other hand, it also gives her a sense of futility, watching people try to accomplish things in forty or fifty years of productive, working life in a world where all of the wonders and discoveries that might yet be possible are mediated through a haze of nearly limitless, empty entertainment and distraction. The number of lives she had controlled, spared, and most importantly taken weighed differently on her now. She had standards, even when she had been starving. She had the echo of morality occasionally jangling between her ears – some sense of satisfaction or poetic justice when the blood she tasted was wicked and dark and better-off spilled. Now, however, she walks by parks in the daytime. She sees children play. She sees their parents, their grandmothers, their pets, and is acutely aware of how little time each of them will last. She knows she does not have as much time left, anymore. 

With that in mind, she now has a few more immediate, salient concerns, she thinks: 

  * She gets hungry in hours now, not days. She cannot survive on blood and chocolate alone. Chocolate is now something to be counted as a part of a _balanced diet_ rather than the last thing she remembers liking the smell and taste of on her tongue that didn't taste of iron and salt. She has to figure out which fruits and vegetables she likes, can tolerate, and refuses to have anywhere near her. Garlic, as it turns out, is not that bad with a pretty standard sense of smell. Cream puffs – and pastries in general – almost immediately are not, actually, her thing. 

  * She has to sleep around ten hours a day not to feel a sluggishness in her muscles that makes her want to punch through something or drag her nails along something to leave marks, neither of which she can do rested or not these days. Laura says, sometimes, that ten hours is too much for any 'responsible adult,' but she has seen Laura Hollis spend twelve hours in a bed during the worst of her malaise about the real nature of life and the world. She thinks that she can be excused for not limiting herself to eight hours. She hates that now, usually, her body is inclined to sleep when it is dark. 

  * Music isn't as nice, as transcendent and transformative, as it used to be. On the other hand, she appreciates earbuds more now. 

  * The sun. The sun is something that she had not forgotten completely. It wasn't like in the movies. Still, being awake and around and about and walking along sidewalks and 'enjoying parks' with Laura where they feed ducks and lie on blankets is a bit much at first. It seems to draw her energy out of her body and make her wear a constant frown. Sometimes, her pale skin turns red when she doesn't find shade soon enough or stands in one spot for a long time, looking around while Laura moves from stall to stall at a street market. Sometimes, her reddened skin itches and burns. She wonders two things about popular vampire mythology: how is it that normal people think vampires are the ones with a sun problem and why isn't the sun the more popular life-sucker monster in postmodern fiction? 

  * Time. Mortality. Life. Death. Purpose. And... jobs. Carmilla appreciates that no one has evr quite come up with a system that totally replaces money without creating room for a different kind of oppression with less choice in the format of said oppression. Still, she needs money now, more than she ever did. Even if she doesn't need money, Laura needs money for the life she intends to live, and Carmilla has no interest in denying Laura anything she deems 'normal' that doesn't grate her to her core. In order to get money, people have jobs. People also talk about job satisfaction, career aptitude, and life goals in terms of which shiny office building they want to work in with what color and shape of cubicle, as best Carmilla can tell. She didn't think she'd ever really miss ancestral aristocracy once she had realized her status as the family chattel, but sometimes she wonders now. She wonders, too, if there might be _something_ she would actually like doing that involves money. Art theft, maybe. Laura wouldn't like that. 




Just when the bother of waking up, going to sleep, exercising in order to maintain what strength she has left, dealing with senses that seem dull, boring, and useless, and late-stage capitalism make her question why it's worth doing anything safely or at all, she remembers. Of course she remembers. For one thing, Laura is not a quiet person when she is alive and not withdrawn into bouts of survivor's guilt. Those happen from time to time and remind Carmilla that even killers have different thresholds for coping. Somehow, the fact that Laura has killed and saved with the same story-crafting heart makes it a little easier to reconcile herself to being beside her anywhere but hiding away in the dark, shadowy places created by the looming existence of Silas University. Somehow, it's possible to be human with her, rather than with anyone else. 

Laura has her father, a series of job interviews, a reliable internet connection, a phone, a webcam, video editing software, analytics to stare at, pinterest boards to construct, cocoa to make, pastries to eat, (and pastries offer to Carmilla before she eats them instead). Laura has life experience of field reporting in what amounts to a war zone of supernatural proportions. She has a hard time figuring out how to put that onto a resume and/or C.V. that most employers will believe. She thinks about whether or not she counts as a Social Media Influencer, or if she even agrees with that term. 

Then, other times, she looks at Carmilla like she is the only thing in the world. Carmilla is reminded of books she has read, and she thinks that Laura would be proud of her for having gotten to the point that there is no irony in that thought if she said it out loud. Usually, she takes the opportunity instead to smile slyly and to kiss her because she can. Other times, they talk without the temptation of kisses, satisfied with more standard use of chairs, beds, and desk surfaces while they learn how to live again – in one way, and another. 

Whether she means to or not, mature, world-wise, and brilliant Laura Hollis teaches her things, day by day, that make the bother of every day worth giving it a little more time: 

  * Maybe having a gross, thudding, thumping heartbeat isn't so bad. She notices it when they kiss. She notices it when they lie side by side – on their bed and anywhere. She notices it in cool air when they stay up late at night and find somewhere dark and quiet to go stargazing. She notices how their heat is similar now and shared. She doesn't mind knowing she has a heartbeat for as long as Laura has one too. 

  * The variety of food is a lot more interesting than the variety of blood. It also carries a considerably lower likelihood of moral guilt on whatever scale one chooses to measure it – for whatever that is worth. Laura tries and fails to get her to like the thick, sweet, heavy breads that make up the light, bright-sounding _creampuffs_ which Carmilla had always _thought_ looked nice. Laura succeeds in teaching both Carmilla and herself to eat salad at her father's house and at his insistence. They evaluate salad dressings together and stock her father's fridge with them, much to his frustration – oil and vinegar are so diverse in their uses and all you need, he insists. Carmilla might agree, but it is too much fun to watch him squirm. 

  * Jobs might be more diverse and less boring than she thought. A strong background in philosophy really isn't the best background for getting a lot of skilled jobs, Laura points out – sometimes a little too gleefully, but then she apologizes and tries to be a little more helpful. Carmilla sometimes thinks she'd be happy being a kept woman. Then, she tries to figure out how she can make Laura smile with surprises acquired without her knowing. Quite the dilemma. 

  * Life doesn't seem so short and easily destroyed when they are together. On trains, in buses, on a bike with wind whipping back Carmilla's hair. It almost seems like they can save time, or beat it. It wouldn't be the first time Laura had shown Carmilla how to achieve the impossible. Even if they fail, as long as they are doing it together, Carmilla can see the romance in trying. 

  * It turns out, even two perfectly normal, ordinary, living-and-dying, mortal human girls can stay up late at night – far from the glare of the sun. 




 


End file.
